Senator Coburn on Obamacare expectations

Dr. Coburn (R-OK) appearing today on a morning talk show asserted his holds the most conservative record in the U.S. Senate and that Senator Cruz's demand to defund Obamacare was "a short term goal with lousy objectives."

"I'd love to get rid of Obamacare, but I don't see a path forward to doing that until the President is out of office," Coburn added. "The problem with politics is if you create expectations you can't fulfill, that leads to disappointment. Our biggest problem in our country now...is the fact that people don't have any confidence in our future. They don't have confidence in your leadership. They don't have confidence in the politicians. A lot of the institutions they don't have confidence in. We want leadership that pulls us back together and restores confidence rather than divides us.

"You know, I'm all for changing the Affordable Care Act, eliminating and doing something more transparent, more market-oriented. But to create the impression that we can defund Obamacare when the only thing we control, and barely, is the U.S. House of Representatives is not intellectually honest....It is the disappointment that we put a short term goal with lousy tactics ahead of being honest with the American people. And that's what we don't need. We need integrity in government and speaking the truth."

On how he will vote on the CR: "There is not going to be a CR I Vote for because I don't think it's the way to run a government. It's terrible... It costs more money. It's terrible for our managers at the agencies. You don't allow them to make good decisions in terms of planning. We've got wonderful federal employees at almost all the agencies. We put them in handcuffs with a CR So it's a terrible way to run the government.

"I don't vote for CRs. There can't be a sweetener to get me unless it is cutting spending for the rest of the year and directing the spending and giving flexibility to managers to make good decisions. The great thing about the sequester though it's a terrible way to cut is the necessity created a lot of innovation in these agencies and it is amazing the things it got rid of that they didn't need," Coburn said.

On wasteful spending Coburn said, "The problem with Washington is Congress. It's congress not doing the oversight on all the waste. Take for example 47 job training programs for the nondisabled. When you have the rest of the jobs we are spending $30 billion a year and nobody oversighted one of them and most don't work."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bww4LTYeB-s